#but also i forget stuff a lot so since i consider this my canon playthrough i wanted to write things down

[chantryexplosion]

u think ur insane but i literally sat there and took notes of every single thing that happened in my durge playthrough while i was playing it

[yukidragon]

SDJ Headcanons

I got a request to hear some of my headcanons for the vanilla universe of my fandom noodling with Something’s Wrong With Sunny Day Jack. Well, maybe vanilla isn’t quite accurate considering we’ve got quite a bit of spice with our resident yandere Jack. Maybe more like vanilla mixed with caramel and fudge.

Anyway, these are some thoughts that more than likely are going to show up in my fanfic, Sunshine in Hell, if they haven’t already. So, uh, spoiler warning I guess?

To start with, I will have to say that this headcanon started building from the classic demo, where a number of details are different from the extended demo. Not to say that I’m ignoring things the extended demo added or changed. This is to say that Sunshine in Hell’s continuity will be slightly different from the classic and extended versions, like the two versions of the game are slightly different from one another, and will likely be different from the fully released game. I pieced together a lot of hints sprinkled throughout Jambeebot’s twitter, and have formed a few ideas about where the plot might be going. It might not be how it actually turns out, but why not run with them in my fic?

Originally I didn’t have anything in mind for y/n other than the classic namable first person MC playthrough. Hell, originally I didn’t plan on writing fic or fan art at all. Then I started developing some headcanons because Jack is so interesting and appealing, and I thought, ya know what, why not use this as an opportunity to do some character designing? I can even challenge myself with details that I struggled with in the past, like curly hair, plus size body type, and intricate tattoos. I picked the name Alice because Jack is a common name in literature, so why not go with another common one for his sunshine? It also became pretty fitting for different reasons as the headcanons slowly bloomed outward and Alice started developing a life of her own.

Just as a heads up, these are current headcanon thoughts. They might wind up getting changed by the time I actually get them written down for Sunshine in Hell. Some things have already changed since my initial headcanons as I’ve started writing and since more information came out after all. So just think of a few of these as fun possibilities for the future~

Now then, let’s go for the specific headcanon bits. I’ll put them under a cut and sort them by character. This isn’t all the headcanon stuff of course. I can make a follow up post with more, but here’s some of the bigger ones floating around in my head. Oh, heads up, some of these headcanons will be 18+ only, going into pretty dark and/or spicy places, but then again, that’s the type of game SDJ is. You have been warned.

Oh, and of course I can’t forget to tag @channydraws because I’m serving up some SDJ content over here.

Jack

Jack loves Alice. Full stop. Yes, this is a canon fact that Jack loves his sunshine, but I’mma emphasize that the man has fallen so gosh darn hard for Alice that it’s almost scary.

Speaking of which, the man is desperate for Alice’s love. It’s not just because he loves her, but because he’s convinced that she needs him to love her. He could feel it calling to him while he was still trapped in the hell of that VHS tape he was cursed to. He needs her to love him, not just because he loves her, but because her love is the only thing that’ll save him from being damned to that hell all over again.

Other people played the tape before, not just Alice, but not many. Jack experienced this happening and to him it was the closest to relief from his hellish damnation he could find. It was like reliving his memories... then the ending of that incident would tear him apart all over again.

Jack doesn’t remember the incident itself because it was so painful, he blocked it out.

Jack blocked out a lot of painful things from his past. It’s part of why he’s currently Jack and not Joseph anymore.

Might as well give my headcanon here of the incident itself - Jack was murdered by someone from his past before he reinvented himself from unloved delinquent Joseph Cullman to actor Joseph Haberdae.

Changing himself after abandoning his past is something Jack has done before... and the incident was such a trauma that he did it again, clinging to the Jack persona... the only version of him who was actually loved.

Well... unless I go with the death and rebirth plot point I’m sort of half-considering for Alice. If I go that route then Joseph was loved... he just lost that love to tragedy and it played a part in him running away to begin with. Might just save that for an AU though.

Regardless, Joseph wasn’t loved by his parents. They kept up appearances, even lied that they loved him, but they didn’t, not really. They ignored him, were into drinking and coffee, sometimes even physically abusive when he acted up... but at least they paid attention to him then.

Joseph acted up in a desperate bid for attention. It was the only way he knew how to get people to stop looking through him as though he didn’t exist.

This included teachers and his peers. Joseph wasn’t exactly the greatest person at this age...

You know that image where Jack talks to the crying guy with the knife? Well, Joseph has some experience with the things he says there... such as phrases like “burden to the class” and “worthless.”

Needless to say, his relationships with his peers were... not the best.

This is why there was one person who would never forget Joseph. This person nursed a grudge hunt him down to the set of the SunnyTime Crew and there, well... a lot of traumatic things happened as skeletons Joseph had buried were dug up and exposed for everyone to see.

Between the murder and unsettling past details about their beloved lead actor, the studio decided it was best to bury the whole show in the aftermath of what happened.

Little is remembered about the SunnyTime Crew show in the present, mostly rumors that became ghost stories and then creepypasta. Tapes and official merchandise are hard to come by, but they are still out there hidden away in places... waiting for someone to dig them up.

That’s how the VHS wound up in the thrift store after all. Someone got a copy of the incident before it was scrubbed... and decided to keep it as a little snuff film for personal amusement. The tape got rewatched a lot and it... definitely had an affect on Jack.

The tape was sold on accident by a relative of the sicko who kept it in their private collection. They thought it was just old junk that was worth getting at least a few pennies for it rather than just chucking it into the trash.

How Jack got into the tape in the first place was a mixture of the trauma of what happened, Jack himself unable to handle the way he died or being forgotten... and possibly a curse from a murderer who was bitter enough to nurse a grudge for a decade and hunt Joseph down to get revenge in such a public and cruel way.

Jack remembers very little, suppressed by trauma. He clung to his persona as Jack to keep his sanity, to be a person who is “clean” and worthy of loving.

Jack is what he thinks he should be, what type of person who can be loved. It’s not a mask so much as who he is desperate to be.

Jack will do whatever it takes to be loved. He will need time to understand that he doesn’t have to work so hard to earn Alice’s love, as his sincere feelings are enough to sway her heart.

On that note, Jack will be delighted that he and Alice bond so quickly without him having to resort to... desperate methods. His sweet sunshine responds to his sincerity, proving just how special their bond is and how right it is to love her.

Yes, this basically means Alice is doing a kiss/yes route. Spoilers, I guess?

Jack wanted to make friends with other people too, as many as possible. Alice would always be his best friend and number one in his heart, of course. That’s obvious. A pity that no one can see/hear/touch him...

Needless to say, that makes him all the more desperate for Alice’s love.

I fully plan on Sunshine in Hell having a happy ending where Jack and Alice help each other heal from their respective scars and they can be happy together. Spoilers I guess?

Also, yes, some of that healing will involve sexy times. Jack is touch starved to the extreme, and he just can’t get enough of Alice’s soft warmth...

Alice

To briefly touch on the rebirth plot line I may or may not add in, Alice’s name in her past life would be Mary. She would’ve been Joseph’s childhood friend and the only one who showed him any affection, and she related to him in having shitty parents, just hers were rich and didn’t like punk delinquents like Joseph... especially since their daughter had a big crush on said bad boy. Unfortunately she also had a disease that the doctors never found a cure for and she died from it not long before Joseph finally ran away. This ties in with the bloody pills and scalpel imagery in the opening screen.

Alice has a medical condition that 40 years ago would’ve killed her. Fortunately, in the present with modern medical technology, it’s treatable with medication. She keeps the pills in the safe in her bedroom and takes them daily.

Yes it’s the same disease she would’ve had as Mary if I go the rebirth route.

Alice will eventually keep the tape in the safe to keep Jack safe.

Alice has albinism, which she inherited from her dad who also has albinism. This makes her more prone to getting sunburned and makes her dislike the sun more.

Alice also dislikes alcohol. She tolerated it because her friends enjoyed it, but she hated how it made her feel. She won’t drink at all in the present day, not even socially.

Alice had a pastel goth phase in college, complete with dyed pink hair, until classes got to be too much for her to keep up with the look.

College was exhausting for Alice and she struggled with her major.

The major she wound up taking wasn’t actually what she was passionate about, but it was what she felt was most realistic for her to attain at least a decent future.

Alice likes to draw.

Alice’s parents are really nice. Her mom is a bit of a flake, but very loving. Her father is very affectionate and at times her parents remind her of Gomez and Morticia. They were also childhood sweethearts who are still madly in love as adults... which colored her view of her relationship with her own childhood friend, Ian.

Alice really did see a future with Ian. She hoped someday they would get married and they would have children together just like her parents, but...

Well, in school, Alice wasn’t very popular.... to put it mildly. Kids can be cruel, especially to those who are unusual. She was bullied all throughout her school days until she reached college age.

The reasons Alice was bullied were mainly due to her appearance (pasty pale and chubby) and the fact that when she was little she was pretty nonverbal.

It took many years for Alice to get better at talking to people. Part of her therapy to develop her verbal skills included using a puppet to speak for her.

Yes, this is where the puppet in her concept sheet, Honey Bunny, comes in. She still has that puppet even after all this time, though it’s currently tucked away in a box. Yes, Jack will eventually have the pleasure of meeting Honey Bunny.

Alice is the oldest child with at least two younger siblings. They haven’t been fully developed yet.

Alice is a survivor of SA and that greatly affected how she deals with intimacy and feelings of being trapped.

Alice currently suffers from very low self-esteem. Between a past of being bullied for her looks and personality, the SA incident, and being betrayed by the person she trusted with her heart...

Alice did forgive Ian and she did try again... but ultimately ended things after she realized that she just couldn’t forget what happened and she couldn’t stop feeling like she wasn’t “enough” for him.

Alice doesn’t think anyone would be attracted to her, not really. With Ian, it was a special case, where they grew up together and things developed over time. What she had with Ian was something that happened only once in a lifetime... and it all fell apart.

In the present Alice is lonely. She’s given up on being loved but still feels empty and wishes desperately for it... and that wish summoned Jack.

Alice is an empathetic person, and it has gotten her in trouble in the past trying to help people because she felt sorry for them... even if they didn’t necessarily deserve it. It’s something that Jack is concerned about now that he’s there even if he benefitted the most from her being too kind for her own good sometimes...

Alice chose to save Jack. She doesn’t remember it because the process of saving him required giving him a piece of her soul. He gave her a piece of his in return. This is why she’s the only one who can see, hear, and touch him. While she didn’t fully consider all the implications of this choice at the time, the soul trapped in the tape was so desperate and suffering so much, and she was the only one in the whole world who could save him from hell... she couldn’t live with herself if she just chose to leave him damned when she could do something to save him... and he did promise he would never hurt her, never do anything she didn’t want to do...

This piece of each other’s souls is why Jack and Alice can feel each other’s emotions as well as overhear thoughts. Alice doesn’t remember this ability, and Jack doesn’t want to tell her for fear of scaring her. After all, she doesn’t remember the agreement they made and she was so scared when she woke up without remembering what happened...

This agreement can be ended frighteningly easy. It’s part of how Jack got Alice to agree in the first place. If one of them doesn’t want him to be there... then it’s all over.

Alice can feel Jack’s love for her and responds to it very strongly, even if she’s unaware that it’s happening. It’s why even though only a day has passed, she feels the need to take care of him.

Needless to say, all Jack really needs to do is love Alice and be patient with her. She likes him and wants the love he is offering her so desperately... She’s just going to need time to heal from her scars...

Speaking of scars, the scar on her forehead is from the night Ian cheated on her.

Ian

With that, let’s turn our attention to the cheater in question. Why did he do it? Well, he was lonely. He had moved someplace all on his own and no longer had someone to support him by his side all the time, someone to reassure him and tell him he was beautiful and worth loving and desirable...

Until, guess what, his glow up finally was paying off. People started flirting with him at the college and, hey, what’s the harm in flirting back a little? It’s just paying a compliment and it felt good. He told Alice about the new friends he made there on campus and it was all innocent...

And dang were some of these people hotties. Skinny ladies with big boobs just like the animes... and they were flirting with him like he was the protagonist of a harem isekai story.

You know the song “Say No to This” in Hamilton? Ian had the same vibe going when he finally gave in to his base desires.

He didn’t know what happened! One moment he’s having a nice time with his new friend at the college and he was so lonely without Alice and suddenly they were kissing and it felt so good and she wanted him and for a while he forgot that he was lonely and missing his girlfriend...

Then post-nut clarity hit and he was like OH SHIT.

Ian really hoped that if he confessed right away, the damage wouldn’t be so bad, right? It was just a mistake. Alice has always forgiven him for his mistakes. She forgave him when he got too rough during sex despite her issues due to SA, so this can’t be much different. She herself said there was nothing that would make her not love him when he was down on himself thinking he would never be worthy of love or attractive...

Ian has self-confidence issues out the wazoo. He was bullied as a kid, had his looks insulted, and generally was treated like garbage by the other kids. Being the center of attention and desired as an adult is a new experience for him... one that, unfortunately went to his head... both the one on his shoulders and the one between his legs.

Ian was the only friend who consistently hung out with Alice. They were two “losers” at school who stuck together. It was almost natural that feelings would develop between them.

Alice and Ian both struggled with shyness, fumbling with crossing the line from friendship to lovers. Their relationship really was sweet... but not without its issues...

Ian apologizes a lot. A lot a lot. It gets to the point where Alice spent a lot of time just reassuring him. He missed that terribly when he went to his dream school and had to leave her behind.

Unfortunately, flattery and lust served as temporary, if empty substitutes...

Ian greatly regrets what he did, what he lost, and he’s determined to fix things... Alice did forgive him and gave him a second chance. They’re just on a break. Just a break. If he gives her a little space, but makes sure she never forgets him, if he just does the right thing to prove that they belong together, then everything can go back to normal...

Although, confidentially, the cheating wasn’t their only issue that made Alice see that ending the relationship was the best thing she could do for the both of them.

Shaun

Let’s hop off the cheater train and board the cat daddy express, shall we? Dude is a bro of the highest order, a Grade A pal.

Shaun met Alice when they shared a class in college. He thought she was cute and so sweet. He would’ve asked her out, but then he found out she had a boyfriend and, oof, heartbreak. Still, he sincerely was happy to be friends with her, and he liked Ian and was happy to make friends with the dude.

Until the night Ian made a frantic phone call to Shaun to check on Alice since she wasn’t answering her phone and he thinks she’s hurt and he’s the only one with a spare key to their place!

Shaun got Alice to the hospital that night. Turns out alcohol can’t make you forget heartbreak even if you drink enough of it to get alcohol poisoning and wind up bashing your head on broken glass. It was a pretty traumatic sight for him to come across, and he was so relieved when he heard the news that she would be alright.

Naturally this put Ian on Shaun’s shit list after finding out why Alice drowned herself in booze that night.

Shaun was the MVP, and his friendship with Alice strengthened in the aftermath... and he was one of the people who helped her see that forgiving Ian was the worst choice she could make for both her and Ian. He was there to support her decision to break things off for good and was her shoulder to cry on during her heartbreak.

Shaun and Alice bonded in college over liking the goth aesthetic and cats. At least half the posters in Alice’s apartment are from Shaun.

Shaun, sadly, had very poor timing when it comes to anything romantic with Alice. He came into the picture when Alice was already deeply in love with Ian. Alice couldn’t even think about dating after the breakup, let alone risk their relationship by letting it change. Then he had to move away for his own degree to become a director... and when he finally moves back into the area, his bad timing shows up again as he finds Alice once more has a boyfriend...

Shaun has mixed feelings about Jack. He’s not just suspicious about Jack’s whole deal, but he feels protective of Alice after what she went through.

At the same time HOLY SHIT A REAL LIVE CURSED VIDEO TAPE WITH A REAL LIVE, ER, DEAD GHOST! Or maybe not a ghost but something else? Either way holy shit this is awesome. Shaun is totally geeking out.

Yes, Alice told Shaun about Jack the day he came to stay with her for a while. I already have a little scene written up of Jack and Shaun having a little... chat.

Chances are good that Shaun and Jack will actually become friends, though Jack is definitely going to make sure Shaun remembers who is most important to Alice...

Needless to say, it’s hella awkward for Shaun when Jack makes sure he’s going to hear Alice cry out Jack’s name at least once. Poor guy. Jack is a poor winner isn’t he?

Moon Pie

Fortunately, there's Moon Pie to give Shaun love and cuddles in his hour of need.

Moon Pie is a sweet little blind bundle of floof. Shaun adopted her after seeing her info and pics on a website and fell in love. She is a very affectionate baby and sticks close to her daddy.

Shaun loves Moon Pie to pieces and will commit a violence if anyone were to threaten her.

Alice, too, quickly falls in love with Moon Pie. Pity she doesn’t have the energy or financial stability to adopt a cat of her own yet. Maybe someday... till then, she can be the fun cat aunt.

Initially when I first saw Moon Pie I was going to make her Alice’s cat, but I can’t bring myself to steal a baby away from her daddy, so Alice will have to simply love her from afar. Alas, this is the true tragedy of Something’s Wrong With Sunny Day Jack.

Fortunately, Shaun is the best cat dad a precious bundle of floof like Moon Pie could ask for.

Moon Pie can sense Jack.

Don’t worry, Jack likes Moon Pie and thinks she’s cute. Though he does admittedly get a little jealous when Alice cuddles Moon Pie and gives the baby little smooches.

Moon Pie might or might not have unintentionally provoked Jack to assert his place as number one in Alice’s heart. Good thing she can’t have her innocent eyes besmirched by the things this lusty yandere clown does to his sunshine when Shaun isn’t home!

Moon Pie will nap on Jack at least once. Shaun will take pictures. All of the pictures.

Carol

Carol is at least 5 years older than Alice and worked longer than her at the yogurt place, so she’s an expert on doing as little of her job as she can get away with while still earning a steady paycheck.

She is a worldly lady who leans strongly towards women, but finds guys hot too.

Her eyeliner game is absolutely on point. When not forced to dress as a clown, this lady has style.

An example of that style is how Carol absolutely owns her vitiligo and makes it into a fashion statement.

Carol enjoys teasing Alice and thinks she’s kind of cute sort of like a pet rabbit kind of way. She’s gotten some details about her younger co-worker and has teasingly offered to set Alice up on a blind date with a guy she knows who thinks plus size ladies like her are cute.

They’re not exactly friends, but friendly and they get along well enough. Whether they become friends eventually is up in the air... especially when there’s a very possessive yandere best friend now in the picture.

Nick

Got a crush on the cute lady working at the funky clown yogurt place.

Tried to shoot his shot and unfortunately got shot down instead when she told him she has a boyfriend. That sucks.

In another world, that would only be the start of his worst night ever. Fortunately in the Sunshine in Hell universe, a certain supernatural yandere didn’t see him as enough of a threat to bother with. What wonders a little feeling of security in a relationship can do...

However, just because Nick lucks out in not provoking the yandere haunting treatment doesn’t mean that there won’t be other people who cross the line...

Ho my, this has turned out much longer than I was planning. I’ll save other details for another post. I hope y’all enjoyed me rambling on and let me know if there’s anything you want me to focus on for next time! If you liked any of this stuff, please read Sunshine in Hell and let me know what you think. Your feedback/reviews/comments give me life.

[the-insomniac-emporium]

thoughts on Bela///Donna?

What a lovely can of worms you've placed in my inbox, dear nonnie. I cannot wait to open it and lose followers (regardless of what I actually say).

Since this is, uh, a subject of some debate among RE8 fans, I will be inputting my thoughts on the idea of the ship (and the possible controversy), as opposed to doing HCs or something for it (which I recognize might be what you were asking for, despite the excessive /s).

This is all based on my playthroughs of the game, as well as what I've managed to double check on the fandom/wiki for it. I know that a lot of people who read fanfic for the game haven't actually played it, likely having been lured in by Tall Vampire Milf, and so I hope that some people will be open to a reminder of, like, canon vs fanon? I've mentioned in a previous post that there's a lot of details for RE8 that are not made clear, and I feel the need to reiterate that in this post. Capcom left a lot of stuff up to people's imaginations, or kind of just hinted at in game or in concept art.

But more importantly, regardless of what game we're talking about, regardless of the conclusion I come to (and the one you come to) at the end of this post, I want to say that I absolutely understand the need/desire to have your own perspective/take on the characters from the game, as well as their dynamics. If a ship makes you uncomfortable because you see the characters as being family members, it's totally okay. Block the ship tag, or filter it out when you look through fandom stuff, don't follow people who post for it, etc, etc.

If you think of characters as being family-family (like, not just "we got married and are now a family" but, like, "we're siblings/parent and child") and still ship them? uh. sorry, bruv, maybe think of hitting that unfollow button. No, seriously, hit that unfollow button. This blog is anti-incest, thank you very much.

The last thing I'll say before putting it under a read-more (for both length and major RE8 spoilers) is that I recognize that I might have missed something, either in game or developers talking about things on social media, and so if you read through this and go "god, J, you're such a dumbass for forgetting *critical piece of media*" or even just "okay but have you seen *small but meaningful piece of media*?" please. Just. Please. Tell me. Link me to that shit. I WANT to know if I'm wrong. I've literally avoided talking about this for as long as I could in order to TRY and make sure I have all the context I need.

With that said, let's examine what context we are given for Alcina Dimitrescu, Bela Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, and their relations to each other. I will be leaving my personal thoughts on Bela///Donna at the very end of this, as somewhat of a conclusion, somewhat of just a "hey, this is what you technically asked me about".

Firstly, let me begin by explaining what I consider to be the 3 tiers of "canon"

In-Game/Direct: The highest, truest tier, the definitive canon. This is everything that takes place in game, excluding certain hallucination scenes (ex: Mia was not really in House Beneviento, but we can infer some things from what Donna made Ethan hallucinate about). Things either happen, or are directly stated by characters. There's some wiggle room for dialogue, as characters can lie, but overall we, as the audience, assume we are being told the truth. At the very least, games usually eventually make it clear when a character has been dishonest. Examples of Direct Canon include the following: Ethan is infected with the mold, Lady Dimitrescu drinks blood, Heisenberg wears sunglasses, Mother Miranda can shapeshift.

Concept Art/Developer's Notes/Indirect: Mid-tier and debatable, the "we think, but we're not sure" of canon. Resident Evil: Village contains lots of concept art that the players can browse through, all of which include notes from the developers about the game, characters, environments, and story. Sometimes the notes make something "direct", but oftentimes they do not specify whether the listed idea is still canon or if it was removed during development. This tier also includes information that is implied/can be inferred from tier 1 information, but is not directly stated. Examples of Indirect Canon include the following: Donna's mother died by suicide, Moreau was going to have his lover fused to his back, Duke was originally a fifth lord, Heisenberg was going to have a twin. As you can see, not all of the concept art ideas made it into the final version of the game, so it can be hard when some information seems like it might still be true (such as the matter of Donna's parents).

Fanon/"False": Sometimes collective ideas in a fandom become so widespread that people start interpreting them as actual canon. Sometimes it gets hard to remember what's just obscure lore and what's fanon. When we get a piece of fiction as overall vague as a lot of Resident Evil: Village is, there's bound to be some confusion over time. That's one of the main reasons I waited to talk about Bela////Donna until after I had recently replayed relevant sections of the game, as I wanted to remind myself of what we're actually told. Examples of False Canon are difficult to pinpoint, but might include things like: Hufflepuffs are good at finding things? The Avengers got along for awhile and all had their own rooms in the tower? There's a number scale for the danger level of ghosts in Danny Phantom?

For this post, I will be limiting the majority of my notes to the first two levels of canon, and will do my best to mark them as such. Now... let us... begin.

Alcina Dimitrescu:

Born no later than 1914, Alcina Dimitrescu was 44 years old when she was granted the Cadou by Mother Miranda. (1st Tier: Canon. Source: A note in the castle basement from a servant is dated 1958, and mentions both Alcina and her children. Secondly, Miranda's experiment notes state that Alcina was the 181st subject, and was given the Cadou at age 44. By doing math, we can then determine the earliest Alcina could have been born.)

Alcina refers to the other Lords as her family once without any disdain (when Ethan first arrives at the castle and is caught, Alcina says "you've escaped my little brother"). In a private journal (located near where she threw the infamous vanity) she insults the other Lords, and expresses anger that she is "treated like a sister to them". She argues with Heisenberg without any hesitation, and seems honest in her hatred of him (per Maggie Robertson's wunderbar performance). (1st Tier/2nd Tier: Canon with a sprinkle of interpretation for the last line)

Alcina openly refers to Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela as her daughters, and wrote in her experiment journal that she felt instantly connected to them (as mother and daughters). (1st Tier: Canon).

Bela Dimitrescu:

Likely born in the 1930's or 1940's, in order to be an adult by 1958 (the first dated appearance of the Dimitrescu daughters). (2nd Tier: Based on inference)

Dialogue shows that all three of the daughters do love their mother, and reinforces the bond Alcina's journal mentions. (1st Tier: Canon)

We are not given any information about how Bela feels about the other Lords, or even what she knows about them. Once can assume that she shares the ideas of her mother, either because Alcina tells her things directly, or because Bela (who is eager to please her mother) picks up on them over time. (2nd Tier: Based on inference)

Donna Beneviento:

No idea when she was born. If you've read one of my recent posts, then you know that it's almost entirely a matter of 2nd and 3rd tier canon.

Of the four lords, Donna seems to have the most story within the 2nd tier, and has very, very little in the 1st tier. Duke says she's somewhat isolated, and that her "playmates" never leave the house. Miranda's notes state that Donna is mentally ill, and the gardener's diary states/implies (bit of both) that Donna has severe social anxiety. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly canon)

Supposedly, her parents committed suicide while she was still a child. This is indicated in concept art/the attached developer's notes. However, the only part that's also directly stated in game is that her parents (specifically her father) died while she was young. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly canon)

While Donna only has one voice line in the game (and it's sad), Angie talks a fair bit. Angie seems to disapprove of the other Lords, or at the very least enjoys mocking them, as well as enjoys watching them fight with each other. As Angie is connected to Donna, and Donna has some level of control over her, one can assume that the two have similar (if not the same) opinions. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly Canon)

Donna was adopted by Mother Miranda as an adult. It's unclear exactly how old Donna was, or what exactly Miranda did as her "mother", just that Donna was excited about it. (1st Tier: Canon)

Other Relevant Information:

Heisenberg refers to the other Lords as his siblings a minimum of 1 time. Similarly to Alcina, however, he openly insults them and seems to hate them. He just, you know, hates Mother Miranda the most. (1st Tier: Canon)

Mother Miranda does not actually give a shit about the four Lords, intended for them to die before the ceremony, and has been manipulating them for her own gain this entire time. Her notes and dialogue make it clear that she only cares about getting Eva back. Somehow mother of the year and worst mother ever. At the same time. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly Canon)

It's unclear who treats Alcina "like a sister" to the other Lords. Were there cut lines of dialogue that cemented the idea of them being a "family"? Did Miranda call them a "family" as part of pretending she cared about them? I've done my best to dig around, but there's very little in game that treats them as a family of any sort.

As each Lord ruled their own section of the region, they don't have any mentions of interacting with each other outside of meetings with Mother Miranda. None of the notes for any Lord (and their relevant experiments) mention what the others are doing. In game, their environments are very separate, very well divided, though this is likely as much for gameplay as it is for story.

Conclusion:

I do not not believe there is enough in game evidence to suggest that Alcina and Donna consider themselves to be siblings. There's the possibility for a large age gap, Alcina was a fair bit older than Donna when she met Miranda, Donna is a social recluse whose closest bonds were with dead blood relatives and dolls, Alcina openly dislikes (if not hates) the other Lords, they seemingly lived very separate and distanced lives, and Mother Miranda does not enforce the idea of "family". Furthermore, the sheer contrast between how Alcina interacts with/speaks of the other Lords compared to how she interacts with/speaks of her daughters says a lot about her feelings. Even if Heisenberg takes the brunt of her anger, Alcina never once says anything remotely positive about anyone other than Miranda and her daughters.

As Alcina/Bela and Donna are not blood-relatives, the definition of what would count as "incest" does vary depending on who you ask. Personally, I do count non-blood relations as potentially incestuous. For example: Alcina "dating" one of her daughters would be incest, regardless of the fact that she's a mutated human and her daughters are weird swarms of flies.

Now, I do understand how popular the idea of the four Lords being a real, chaotic but still close family is. And as I mentioned above, it's totally valid to not like the Bela///Donna ship, whether it's because you think they're family or some other reason. I don't personally see them that way, even in my definitely-not-canon stories.

Do I personally ship Bela///Donna? Nope. Have I liked art for the ship? Admittedly yes, even if I thought some of it was, like, maiden x Bela because Donna didn't have her veil and I'm a DUMBASS who doesn't always remember to read tags. Would I ever write for it? Yeah, probably, assuming I didn't miss anything in game/that I don't eventually change my mind.

[elyvorg]

Remember that analysis post of mine debunking the ridiculous myth perpetrated in this fandom that Kaito never apologises, in which I discuss how he actually apologises way more than he should? Well, while thinking about and writing that post, I also got curious. What’s the cold, hard data on that? What if I just straight-up counted every single instance of each character apologising throughout the main story of DRV3, in order to be able to indisputably prove at a glance that Kaito is actually one of the most apologetic characters in this game?

…I wasn’t willing to go so far as to play through the entire game again just for the purpose of counting every time a character apologised, mind you. But several months ago, I began watching yet another V3 Let’s Play – and since I was already committed to watching said LP all the way through, I figured I could count all the apologies as it went along and collect that data with minimal extra effort on my part. So here’s the full dataset, at last!

There we go. It is objective and indisputable that Kaito apologises the third-most out of any character in this game, behind only the incredibly insecure Gonta and the still-rather-insecure-and-has-the-most-lines Shuichi. And pretty close behind them, at that!

I noticed a bunch of interesting things while doing this, though, so I can’t resist the chance to break this down and talk about it in some more detail.

Data collection criteria

For the sake of Scientific Thoroughness, I should explain my exact criteria for counting these. Every way of phrasing an apology, be it “sorry”, “my apologies”, “my bad”, etc, was counted. I also decided to count statements along the lines of "I need to apologise for this", because that itself is essentially already expressing the apology, too.

If a character apologises multiple times for the same thing, each of those times counts separately. This isn’t a measure of how many individual things each character apologises for, but rather of how inclined they are to apologise. Even if multiple apologies are grouped together, such as “Sorry… I’m so sorry…” or “sorry, my bad”, those still count as two, because that’s essentially a double-strength apology.

I did not count optional dialogue that was mutually exclusive with other optional dialogue. Which is to say, I didn’t count any FTEs, since you can’t get all of them in a single playthrough, and as much as I might like to insist that Kaito’s and Maki’s FTEs with Shuichi should definitely be considered canon, I’m trying to be unbiased here. I also didn’t count any FTE invitation dialogue, even though you technically can get all of the first parts of those (the lines before you actually make the choice to invite someone) in a single playthrough, mostly because it’d have taken forever to go through them for absolutely everyone.

However, I did count optional dialogue in those bits where you’re free to talk to everyone in the room before advancing the plot by talking to a specific person, because that can all be assumed to be canon. The bonus item scenes also count, because they should be assumed to be canon, too. There may have been some apologies that I missed here, because the LP I was watching occasionally missed these bits of dialogue, and while I tried to check myself for these missed bits, I may have overlooked a few. But if so, it was definitely only a few and not enough to significantly affect the overall picture of the data.

I only counted Shuichi’s and Kaede’s apologies when they were spoken out loud. It’d be unfair to count their inner-monologue apologies as well when we have no idea how much any other character might also be apologising in their head.

The pregame characters’ apologies were not counted, because they are not the same people. I would have counted Tsumugi’s and Rantaro’s apologies prior to the “reset” if they’d had any, since they are already themselves from the very beginning.

Obviously there’s still a lot of inherent bias here towards the characters who get more screentime and more lines, such as especially Shuichi. There isn’t much I can do about that, short of counting the exact number of dialogue boxes that every single character has throughout the whole game and using that to normalise things. As you can imagine, I don’t want to do that. (Though, on the extreme off-chance that someone does somehow happen to have data for that lying around somewhere that they can access with minimal effort, I’d love for them to send it my way.)

Characters who totally never do anything wrong

I was not at all surprised to see that Kiyo and Angie never apologise for anything at all, sincere or not, warranted or not. Psh, what do you mean they might have done something wrong, of course they never do anything wrong ever.

Miu almost ended up on the zero-apologies list, too. Interestingly, the four times she does apologise in canon dialogue are all during the Virtual World trip. Three of them happen when people are frustrated that she isn’t telling them stuff about the Virtual World sooner, and one is for being about to murder Kokichi in the flashback to that. Since she never apologises at all the entire rest of the time, this is a neat sign that she actually does feel pretty guilty about deceiving everyone and plotting to get them all killed.

In another effort to be as objective as possible, I also counted every apology regardless of how sincere it was. However, in Kokichi’s case, I did keep a track of how many of his apologies were actually sincere, out of curiosity. (Other characters may have a few insincere ones here and there, but it only felt worth my time keeping track of that with Kokichi, because he’s obviously the biggest offender for this.) I included this information on Kokichi’s bar of the graph, because I feel that the implication otherwise given of him being the fifth most apologetic character in this game is deeply misleading. If you discount all of Kokichi’s screamingly insincere apologies, suddenly his apology count is just unremarkable background noise on par with most of the others.

It is notable – and also very unsurprising to me – that Kokichi’s five actual sincere apologies are all for things that, according to Kaito’s principles on this, he doesn’t really need to be apologising for at all. They are all within chapters 1 to 3. He never sincerely apologises for any of the many things he actually does wrong that really do warrant being apologised for, because Kokichi is totally never in the wrong about anything, you guys, and he definitely doesn’t ever murder anyone.

Three of those five sincere apologies happen when he’s hit his head during investigation 3 and is dazed and disoriented. Apparently Kokichi needs to be literally injured in order to be made to feel like anything is his fault for more than a brief moment. …That said, that evidently only works for accidental slip-ups that aren’t really his fault at all. Kokichi’s totally-never-in-the-wrong-about-anything defence mechanisms work full time to protect him from ever having to acknowledge and feel remorse for any of his many very real and deliberate misdeeds, even when he’s painfully poisoned and dying.

Kaede

Kaede’s apology count is very notably high for someone who was only alive for one chapter. If she’d stayed alive for longer, she’d almost certainly have rivalled Shuichi for total apologies. (So, technically, Kaito is probably only the fourth most apologetic character in this game. Still, though.)

You might assume that Kaede’s high count here is because of the murder she does, but actually only like two or three of them are related to that. Most of her apologies are evenly spread throughout the entire chapter. Some of it���s just general politeness, but an awful lot of it comes from her being too inclined to feel bad over not being as good a leader as she wishes she was, when she really hasn’t done anything wrong at all. Kaito is right to try and encourage her not to apologise when things aren’t her fault! She of all people needs to hear that!

Chapter-by-chapter

The majority of the rest of the characters aren’t that interesting to talk about. For the most part their low counts are basically just, like, background noise politeness, a vague measure of how polite that character is and nothing more. Very little of those counts has anything to do with how insecure that character is, or any actual things they do wrong that genuinely warrant apologising.

But for the other three of our most-apologetic characters, since they’re alive for several chapters, it’s kind of interesting to look at how their counts fluctuate from chapter to chapter. So here’s another graph, to help me break their huge counts down a bit more.

Shuichi

Despite him obviously having the most lines, I was pretty surprised that Shuichi ended up with the highest apology count overall. I wasn’t even expecting him to top Kaito’s count, let alone Gonta’s.

This conclusion did, however, seem a lot more likely once I’d made it through chapter 1 and seen just how much he apologised during that time. Geez, is that one hell of a headstart for even Gonta and Kaito to catch up to. My surprise over this was probably because, when I think about Shuichi, I usually think about the post-Kaede protagonist-Shuichi (perhaps especially because I usually think about him in a Kaito-centric context, whoops). So it’s easy to forget just how incredibly insecure – and also apologetic – he was in the very beginning.

Shuichi apologises exactly as horribly much as Kaede during chapter 1. Again, this is partly politeness, but also far too much of him having an inclination to feel bad over things that aren’t his fault because of how insecure he is. Kaede and Shuichi basically spend most of chapter 1 constantly apologising to each other for existing, and it’s heartbreaking. Every time I had to add another of theirs to my spreadsheet, I was all, “No! Stop it!”

What I find really fascinating about Shuichi’s count, though, is that he pretty much loses this bad habit entirely after Kaede’s death. Despite him still kind of moping around and struggling to know what to do until Kaito steps in to help, it seems like Shuichi’s resolve to carry on Kaede’s wish and believe in himself more really had already had a tangible positive effect on his confidence!

This also means that Kaito never has any reason to give Shuichi advice telling him not to apologise if he hasn’t done anything wrong, which he absolutely would have done if he’d spent more time with Shuichi in chapter 1 when he was apologising so much. As I mentioned in my original post about this topic, this fact is important.

Shuichi’s counts in chapters 2 and 3 are especially low. This is what background noise politeness from a character tends to look like – and it also pretty clearly proves that his and Kaede’s huge apology counts in chapter 1 are down to way more than them just being generally polite people who are getting the most screentime.

It might look like Shuichi gradually gets more insecure again as the killing game goes on, but that’s not actually quite why his count goes up again like that. Instead, it’s that, when something particular does go wrong, Shuichi still feels inclined to apologise for it a lot more than most people would. Turns out, most of his excess apologies in chapters 4 and 5 are spurred by very specific incidents involving Kaito.

Literally five of Shuichi’s apologies in chapter 4 are over the cell phone incident with Kaito during the investigation. That genuinely did warrant an apology – he should have thought to warn Kaito that he’d be logged out beforehand so he wouldn’t be so startled – but even then, apologising that many times was still rather excessive. Shuichi evidently felt really bad about startling his friend like that in the first place. But it also doesn’t help that Kaito reacted more strongly to it than he should have done, for reasons rooted in his own issues that Shuichi was completely oblivious to, which is probably a lot of why Shuichi felt he had to keep apologising.

Three of Shuichi’s apologies in chapter 5 are over the awkward situation between him and Kaito, albeit directed at Maki and not Kaito. This is despite Shuichi himself asserting that he doesn’t believe he should apologise for his actions in trial 4. Even then, he’s still feeling insecure enough about the whole thing that some unintentional apologies slip out of him anyway, not precisely about Gonta’s trial, but about not being able to fix the rift between him and Kaito. He seems to feel like that’s meant to be his responsibility, when he should be able to realise himself that it isn’t. The real responsibility to fix this is on Kaito. Once again, it’s Kaito’s issues – and Kaito not talking about his issues – that causes Shuichi to apologise for something more than he ought to.

Another three of Shuichi’s apologies in chapter 5 are over lying to his friends at the end of the trial in a desperate attempt to protect Kaito. (…Well, technically all of these apologies are part of the lie and therefore not really him apologising for lying – but his inner monologue confirms that he really is sorry for lying, which is almost certainly why he ends up fake-apologising so much within the lie. More on this principle in a bit when I talk about all of Kaito’s apologies in trial 5.) Again, this is another thing that does genuinely warrant an apology, but probably not three times? And while this one isn’t related to Kaito’s issues, it is still because of Kaito that Shuichi needed to try and lie to everyone in the first place.

(One more of Shuichi’s apologies at the end of chapter 5 is for Kaito’s death, because in his grief he’s hurting enough to have slipped back into feeling like everything is his fault. At least this is just the one, and Maki manages to talk him out of blaming himself any more than that.)

Without these specific incidents that he’s still a bit too inclined to feel bad about, Shuichi’s count would be three in chapter 4 and five in chapter 5. So, basically just background noise politeness again. Maybe he’s being slightly more generally insecure in chapter 5 than usual, perhaps due to Kaito not quite being there for him, and/or the whole despair thing. But he’s no longer constantly apologising for existing to nearly as much of an extent as he was in chapter 1.

Delightfully, in chapter 6, with Kaito’s death spurring Shuichi’s determination into overdrive, Shuichi’s count goes right back down to insignificant background noise politeness. Nothing at all happens to make him feel like he needs to apologise way too much.

This is exactly how I hoped it would end! He is being a hero and none of his actions here are anything for him to make himself feel bad about. Kaito would be proud.

Gonta

Gonta’s background-noise politeness in the earlier chapters is noticeably higher than everyone else’s, because there’s also quite a bit of insecurity and apologising-for-existing going on with him. But it’s still not, like, super high on its own. It might not even be quite as bad as Kaede, even accounting for him getting way fewer lines than her?

His somewhat higher count in chapter 2 could be because of the Insect Meet and Greet, but it could also be because the way Ryoma’s body was discovered made Gonta feel especially strongly that he should have been able to prevent Ryoma’s death.

But then, of course, there’s chapter 4. As you’d imagine, almost all of those are in the trial, and almost all towards the end of it. Poor Gonta. It also doesn’t help that there’s two Gontas in the room for the trial conclusion, and naturally I included Alter Ego Gonta’s apologies in Gonta’s count, too.

Kaito

For the first two chapters, when he doesn’t have any sidekicks and therefore no expectations to live up to as their hero, and/or when he’s not struggling with weakness and worrying that he’s failing those expectations, Kaito’s apology level is just unremarkable background noise like most other characters.

(Well, one of them is actually not background noise and is a meaningful, warranted apology for punching Shuichi at the end of trial 1. But because he correctly doesn’t apologise for this any more than he needs to, it kinda blends in with the background noise.)

Then chapter 3 happens, and, predictably, his count shoots way up. All but one of Kaito’s apologies in this chapter are over being sick due to his phobia. (And if I’d been counting the free time invitation dialogues, there would be another four added on here, again for being too sick to hang out with Shuichi.)

Of his five in chapter 4, one is genuinely warranted (for laughing at Maki’s katana story), and two are over being physically sick, goddammit, Kaito. The other two in this chapter are for letting Kokichi’s taunts get to him, which is also not quite a thing he should be apologising for. Kaito can’t help it if his emotions react in a certain way to Kokichi making him out to be worthless. He can control how he responds to it, but not how he feels over it.

Then there’s chapter 5, which somehow manages to even eclipse Kaito’s chapter 3 count – but most of this is about the trial. Only three of his apologies in this chapter are from the Daily Life. (Naturally, two of them are still over being sick. No, Kaito, stop it.)

Literally half of Kaito’s fourteen apologies in the trial boil down to being sorry for tricking and deceiving his friends. This is something that warrants an apology, according to Kaito’s principles, even though he’s doing this deliberately for the purpose of hopefully saving everyone. He is still choosing to hurt them as part of that, and that hurt deserves to be apologised for.

What’s interesting about most of Kaito’s apologies for this, though, is that they’re technically insincere. He’s apologising for tricking everybody while he’s still tricking them, which sure makes it sound like he doesn’t mean it. This even applies to the majority of these apologies that happen during the bits where he’s speaking in his own voice. Because “Exisal Kaito” is a fake and overexaggerated version of himself that he wants everyone to conclude was really just Kokichi pretending to be him, anything he says during those moments is never going to come across as genuine.

But obviously, there’s not a shred of doubt that Kaito really is sorry for tricking everyone the entire time he’s doing this. It says a lot that during those bits where he’s being himself, Kaito just so happens to have a particularly high density of apologies-per-line. He feels awful for being this insincere and deceptive towards his friends, and he really wishes he could just communicate to them how genuinely sorry he is for all of this. But because he can’t, the next best thing to try and scratch that itch is to just apologise anyway even though he needs them to assume it’s all fake.

Kaito even apologises a couple of times as Exisal Kokichi for lying to them! This is absolutely categorically not something Kokichi wrote into his script, because Kokichi never apologised for lying, not even in a blatantly-insincere-sounding way. Kaito’s desperate desire to express how awful he felt about this was just so strong that it even accidentally slipped into a couple of his ad-libs as Kokichi.

However, while Kaito apologises so many times for this, it’s not because he’s blaming himself a bit too excessively much for his wrongdoing like Shuichi was still liable to do at this point in the story. The only reason Kaito apologises this much for tricking everyone is due to how insincere he was forced to sound almost every time. He kept apologising again and again because each insincere apology never felt like enough, and he desperately needed them to know that he meant it.

When Kaito reveals himself at the end of the trial, he pretty much immediately apologises again for tricking them – once, and that’s it. This time, they know he means it, and that’s all he needs. He’s not going to wallow in his bad feelings any more than that.

This is also the case for the other genuine wrongdoings he goes on to apologise for in the conclusion. Kaito gives a double-sized but still concise apology to Shuichi for lashing out in trial 4 like he’d needed to give this whole time, and then one single apology to his friends for lying to them about his illness. He gets those apologies out like he should, but once he’s done so, he doesn’t linger on them and mope any more than he needs to.

Which is good! Look at Kaito finally following his own advice again and being emotionally healthy about this!

…Except for the part where he then goes on to apologise twice for dying on them. That one is still not his fault.

[shidoukanae]

Pokemon SwSh Theory: Sonia suffers from (or was supposed to suffer from) PTSD

Having played through the Pokemon Sword and Shield games, I noticed something very interesting about Sonia’s character. If you talk to her outside of the game’s forced story parameters (and listen to her during a few of them), you’ll find that she seems to have a character arc revolving significantly around one thing: her trip into the Slumbering Weald when she was younger.

I don’t know how many other people have picked up on this because, through watching YouTuber’s playthroughs to refind scenes where Sonia says things, I’ve realized I’m probably one of the few people who keeps talking to her after story scenes are done just to glean more about her character through the hopes of changed-up dialogue.

And, wow. There’s A LOT about Sonia that either goes unsaid or is swept under the rug entirely during the development of her canon character arc.

To start this off, let me posit an idea that I hope will make sense by the end of this: Sonia suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

I will also note I hold no true credentials to properly identify PTSD or claim that I’m an expert on PTSD. I have only done background research on PTSD and its symptoms so my guesses are noobish at best. However, I will try to represent the disorder as accurately as possible but if anyone has the credentials to stop and correct me please do because I realize I’m out of my element here.

This said, let me give a rough timeline of the lore tidbits given to us as players about Sonia and then corroborate them all together at the end to make sense of why I think Sonia has PTSD.

First off: let’s start with what Hop says to you at the very beginning of the game after the Wooloo ramming the gates enters into the Slumbering Weald. 

As stated above, Sonia once went into the Slumbering Weald and came out of it in a “real state”. It’s unclear what Hop means by this but, considering the context of the conversation (in which Hop is saying the forest is dangerous and it’s off-limits) it can be assumed Sonia was badly messed up by her trip in the woods in some way (and, given further context, I would prefer to imagine she’s been messed up in a mental way).

The next piece of information on this event comes from when Hop and you are about to receive your Dynamax Bands as well as after the occasion. Magnolia and Sonia are gathered in the living room and, as you enter a conversation about what you and Hop saw in the woods, Sonia asks:

This is worth noting because it shows Sonia holds an interest in the Pokemon they met in the woods. This is also further backed by what she says if you talk to her directly after this scene where she goes:

As seen, Sonia seems to recollect something about the Slumbering Weald (most likely seeing/meeting the legendary Pokemon) but is unable to consciously explain why she feels uneasy. This suggests that not only did Sonia come out of the woods in a bad state - she likely came out of the woods with no memory of what happened.

This is further emphasized when you talk to her in the Slumbering Weald after the post-game occurs. She meets the both of you in the Slumbering Weald. An obligatory cutscene occurs and, right before the cutscene where you put back the Rusted Sword and Shield occurs, you have a chance to talk to her. Here she says:

This gives the suggestion that, while not consciously able to recollect what happened to her in the Slumbering Weald, she remembers enough to still experience anxiety at being within the forest. 

All these factors combined lead to a single conclusion: Sonia once went into the Slumbering Weald, came out of it badly shaken, and because of her experiences there she suffers from selective amnesia. She unconsciously shows signs of having met something freaky (as hinted by the fact she has probably met the legendary before) and she also seems to have no recollection of what happened during her time in the Slumbering Weald despite expressing anxiety and unease at being in the woods/being reminded of them.

Moving on to things that show even further that Sonia suffers from PTSD, here’s a list of notable things Sonia has said/has shown that I will relate back to the disorder:

-Sonia has lost her purpose in life and feels like she’s going nowhere, showcasing insecurities in her position in life. This is most notable in her introduction if you talk to her after forced dialogue is done with:

and later on when her grandmother calls her out on doing nothing meaningful with her life:

It is also further lamented on by Sonia in two different conversations - each of which has her reassuring you that it’s just “adult stuff” and that you don’t need to worry about her problems (showcasing the potential for her avoiding her problems or, at the very least, not wanting to talk with others about them for support).

(^^^ I would like to note that it is Very Interesting that you, who is obviously much younger than Sonia, has been given the chance to tell Sonia “are you alright?” or “You’ll be alright!” to her at two different points in time. This, combined with the fact that Sonia tells the player they have a sharp insight later on, seems to suggest that the player can tell that something is, indeed, not right with Sonia and this obligatory offering of reassurance by the game is meant to hint something is off with her. Keep in mind that Sonia always deflects your concern for her with “I will make it through, don’t worry about me” which suggests she doesn’t want to open up to anyone else about her problems or acts like they’re trivial when they’re really not for her.)

From this alone, it is very likely Sonia suffers from some form of depression. It is strongly hinted at throughout the narrative that Sonia is disappointed with her lack of purpose in life and that it is impacting her negatively. 

I would also like to add as an interesting side-note that there is a tendency for Sonia to sigh a lot in the beginning of the game. This is more a fun fact than general proof of her being depressed but I find it interesting to see that she is sighing a lot - especially since I would suspect sighing is usually associated with sadness, tiredness, or an overall feeling of exhaustion.

-Furthermore, adding more on to the above, it seems like Sonia is estranged from the people she’s supposed to care about. This is most noticeable with Leon who she’s childhood friends with and once rivals with. Despite supposedly having a close relationship with him (as the game offhandedly suggests the potential for), I couldn’t help but notice how...hostile?...Sonia is towards Leon.

She snaps at him for being unable to remember their status together as rivals (granted, she had the full rights to as he was pretty much ignoring her), she shows insecurities in her life when she compares herself to him, the big strong Champion of the region (as shown above), notes with annoyance at how he has his “head in the clouds”, and even in her introduction she outright treats him with frustration, telling him off if he’s come to ask her about “some superstrong Pokemon again”.

~

~

For someone who’s supposed to be friends with Leon, these bouts of irritation seem a little offputting and overly aggressive. And while I do think some of what she says is meant to be comedic (because it certainly did amuse me to watch her introduction scene so the humor aspect worked if so) I also think it’s very telling of how she puts herself at a distance from Leon and even keeps him at an arm’s length with her childish behavior.

-One thing to notice is that Sonia has supposedly (and I say supposedly because this was never been pitched until Sonia outright states it in the post-game) lost her interest in Pokemon and her passion for it. This is reinforced by two different things in game: the lore provided by the inside of Opal’s gym as well as what she tells the player and Hop in the opening scene of the post-game.

In Opal’s gym, there is a section where you can find Opal’s notes on Sonia. There it is specifically noted that she “gives up too easy” and that this problem of hers is due to the pressure of being the granddaughter of the Pokemon professor. This further ties in to Sonia’s insecurities of her inability to go anywhere compared to her grandmother but it also showcases that she doesn’t have the passion to truly put her heart into the gym challenge she set out to conquer.

Furthermore, Sonia’s loss of passion about Pokemon can be noted in the post-game when she outright tells Hop and the player:

Sonia straight up admits a loss of love for Pokemon that she has now regained by involving herself in the lore of her region. This truly emphasizes the point that Sonia had, at one point, lost the passion she once had for Pokemon but now has regained it after performing the character arc she develops in the games.

...Now, with all these points said, I think it’s about time I relate these pieces of proof back to the idea at hand: Sonia suffers from PTSD and these circumstances and bits of dialogue prove it.

(Above from here)

To explain, PSTD is a disorder that occurs after witnessing a traumatic event. It develops in a person in different ways, but some of the more major symptoms include: a loss of passion in activities you once enjoyed, an estrangement from people who remind you of the event (or just estrangement in general), depression, and those with PTSD may suffer from dissociative amnesia (which is the forgetting of an important event related to a certain trauma).

You see where I’m going with this, right?

Sonia displays all of these symptoms. She has lost her interest in activities she once enjoyed (such as her love for Pokemon), has an estrangement from people she’s supposed to be close with (noticed by the way she keeps Leon at an arm’s length), suffers from depression (as can be seen by Sonia’s insecurities, her inability to open up to others about her problems, as well as her constant feelings of having no purpose in life), and especially suffers from dissociative amnesia (as she has no recollection of what occurred in the Slumbering Weald despite showcasing feelings of unease and anxiety about it).

All these factors combined, I think it’s hard not to believe that, at some point in time, Sonia was meant to not only tackle her problem of not having a purpose in life but, also, not getting closure for what happened to her in the Slumbering Weald. 

The game makes a significant point of showing that Sonia’s involvement with the legendaries when she was younger has impacted her character growth up until now. And, I find it absolutely crazy to believe that these ideas were brought up only to be dropped (and completely forgotten to be erased in canon) when nothing much came from them. 

Sonia could have had a really good character arc on getting over her PTSD, learning what happened to her as a youth and coming to terms with it through her journey to discover the legendaries (which would, of course, have forced her to come back to the Slumbering Weald to find closure for the trauma she experienced before the plot began). Instead, she gets half the closure she needed - finding her purpose in life - and leaves it open-ended as to whether or not she truly got what she needed (figuring out what happened to her in the Slumbering Weald and realizing she can move on now that she knows about the strange pokemon that traumatized her once before).

[rahimaldemir]

Dying Light 2 - Q&A

In the official Dying Light discord one of the representatives, Uncy, from Techland held a q&a session during E3 2019 and I took the time to copy everything down. There were a lot of questions asked, but I only copied down the ones that were answered.

Uncy said they were going to post a FAQ with all of these questions and I’ll make sure to link it when they do. As of right now, I don’t think it has been released.

A lot of people were typing during the session and unfortunately a lot of questions got repeated. There is also a decent amount of typos in these questions, but it felt important to keep the Q&A session in an honest a form as possible, so I have not corrected any typos or omitted any duplicate questions.

I did add a “Q” and “A” to the beginning of every question and answer for clarity. Uncy used emojis sometimes in their answers, but I did not copy those over if they weren’t text emojis.

I have put my own notes in [italicized brackets].

WARNING: There are huge spoilers for The Following in these questions, they are marked to make them easier to avoid, but please be wary.

@tafferfield I know you got a pretty wicked master list of DL2 stuff, so if any of this helps you feel free to grab it and add it.

Putting under a read more because this is long:

Q: Are all current zombies considered volatiles? A: Not really, there are still regular zombies and volatiles

Q: Zombies only exit the night? A: now that's a hard one, zombies can stay outside for some time during the day but they get weak IN THE SUN

Q: How much diffrent endings are there? A: About endings - more than one, don't want to spoil it

Q: Battle royale mode? A: no BR mode

Q: Are you able to clear the city of zombies? A: Basically human learned how to deal with infection, so the more humans the less zombies

Q: how does Aiden stop from turning? does he use antizin or something else A: antizine is finished but human discovered that strong UV light weakens the infection, that's why you have the biomarker

Q: Is Aiden a foreigner to the land like Crane? A: Aiden doesn't even know Crane exists Q: I meant is Aiden from around there or did he come from somewhere else A: he's not from the city, he's an outsider

Q: What are future plans for multiplayer? A: multiplayer wise - we have some stuff coming apart from co-op, but I can't really share multiplayer details now

Q: Will there be a fallout kind of karma system? A: karma system? nope but your choices and actions will affect how people see you

Q: How long will one playthrough of the game be? A: hard to tell, but i know that dl2 will be a game for a long time

Q: Will dying light 2 feature the same great ragdoll physics as the first. A: upgraded ones

Q: Will the game be translated into Brazilian Portuguese as the first? A: more languages will come, cant really tell for now

Q: Can we expect to see actual time sensitive activities within the game? (IE: Do this now or forever lose the chance) A: Yes, but its more like choice wise, like do one thing and u will never be able to do another

Q: Will you play Dying Light 2 with me on release ;d? A: why not

Q: Will Aiden be customizable (e.g. hair, individual clothing pieces,etc) A: yup there will be customization

Q: Is there a weapon combo system? A: what do you mean by that? Q: Like a combo like last game you could spam attack and hold it for a more powerful attack, I'm asking if you can combo attacks like 2 quick attacks and then a charged attack or stuff like that [This question never actually got fully answered]

Q: Did anything replace the grappling hook. Did it change in anyway? A: there's a grappling hook - and some more options to travel cause the city is huge {you will be able to upgrade them}

[SPOILERS FOR THE FOLLOWING]

Q:if the vial ending from the following is canon (if the following is canon) is crane a Volatile?

A: in some way - both are canon. It's up to the player to choose it Q: will Crane make an appearance or not. If you cant answer then atleast say which ending is canon A: not really

[END SPOILERS]

Q: Will the game launch with any DLC's? A: i dont think it will launch with dlc's but post release support is planned

Q: The last trailer showed working vehicles, will we be able to use some? A: Yes

Q: How many different kinds weapons are there (number) A: too many to mention, we're still adding more weapons

Q: is it sticking with the old crafting system or are y'all switching it up A: crafting system is upgraded a little

Q: are in dying light 2 developer tools having the chance to make custom movements and animations? A: I don't really have info about dev tools right now

Q: Are firearms coming back ? A: No guns, no firearms - but there will be distance weapons like crossbows

Q: do we gain strength or anything when nighs fall? since we are infected A: during the night you need to use UV lights to stop the infection, you wont get stronger

Q: is the choices you make permanant (one save only) or can you save and go back? A: you can save and go back on some difficulties

Q: Czy będzie drzewko umiejetnosci tak jak w 1 ? A: tak

Q: Is the max number in a party still going to be 4 or will more team members be able to join in co-op multiplayer, if there is any. A: 4 player coop

Q: is there a system where our beard can grow out and cut it same with hair like rdr2 asked a few times chat just to fast lol A: hmm, i don't think so

Q: Can you turn into a zombie if you dont pay enough attention to your wristband? A: that's still under discussion, i don't think you will be able to play as a zombier tho

Q: When the game releases, are you able to link your old account from DL1 to get rewards? A: we wont forget about dl1 owners

Q: will you be able to upgrade/modify tools like grappling hook and the UV flashlight? A: yes, tools will be upgradeables

Q: are we going to have trading cards to craft badges on steam with dying light 2? A: Yup

Q: Will the UI be changed completely, both in-game, etc? A: there will be some changes for sure, i dont know how hard tho

Q: How many skill trees are there, and are they any more complex? A: you can upgrade a lot of stuff now

Q: Are ranged weapons going to be as powerful as they were in DL1 or is it a bit more balanced A: there are no guns, so its balanced

Q: I wonder if we will see some more gameplay (apart from the trailer) from E3? A: something will come this month

Q: what are the main factions in dying light 2? A: Peacekeepers and scavengers - those are two main factions, but there are more

Q: Who is the girl in the trailer? A: that's actually one of our employees but for now all I can say that she's singing in one of the bars in the city

Q: Has the infection gone worldwide A: yup

[SPOILERS FOR THE FOLLOWING]

Q: What happened to kyle crane? Will he have anything to do with the game

A: he ded

[END SPOILERS]

Q: will there be an enhanced edition or any other editions or just the normal one? A:there will be different editions - more details coming soon

Q: Will some weapons from Dying Light 2 (before release) be added in Dying Light? A: watch the trailer closely

Q: Are you taking in any alpha testers any time soon? If so I would like to be the first volunteer. A: there are no tests planned for now

Q: Referencing the Trailer, will we have the ability to choose our siding, survivor or what seem to be the "law"? A: its all up to you and your decisions!

Q: during the first game the side quests were some of the most amazing in the whole game, my question is, will those little side quests be present in the second game as well and will they also impact the game A: Yeah! side quests will be there and there wont be just easy fetch quests, but rather a small stories on their own

Q:There's a post. On twitter(?) That mentions something like "as Aiden you can do things no one elese can" Does that mean there will be benefits in having your infected level reach a certain level? A: Aiden is simply well prepared to live in The City - that's all I can tell right now

Q: Will there be new skill trees or the same ones? A: would be weird to put in the same skill trees

Q: can you upgrade parts of the town? and is roger smith coming back for Voice acting A: depends what do you mean, if you help certain people by your actions or choices, they will start to build stuff like bridges, farms etc which will help you, they will also get rid of the zombies from buildings etc

Q: Is it possible, that BTZ will be in Dying Light 2? A: possible but not confirmed

Q: can we get the song from the trailer? its sick A: I think i got the name somewhere, ill add it to faq [Couldn’t find Uncy’s link, but I was able to find two of the three soundtracks featured in trailers on youtube: Help I’m Alive and Crimson Blaze & Battlefields]

Q: Please dont add lootboxes A: Cmon

Q: Why can't we pre-order A: cause we don't have all the editions ready yet

Q: got 2 questions: - Will we have a season pass for a limited time just like in Dying Light so we can get the DLCs for free? - can us console players please get a fov slider A: 1.There will be a season pass 2. I'll let the devs know about fov slider

Q: Will there be a new type of villain like Rais? A: nothing is white or black in The City

Q: Will it be the same loot system or a loot system at all? A: what do you mean by loot system? like those crates etc? Q: I'm referring to weapons and stuff like that. A: then I don't really know, afaik it got changed a little

Q: Can we expect to see a different climbing mechanic, same with the grapple? A: parkour system is upgraded a lot, grapple is coming back ofc

Q: 1. are there gonna be volatiles in dl2? and are the zombies in dl2 more faster, brutal and better in movement to chase u down? A: There are new and old zombies, can't tell more atm

Q:Will some of the old zombie mutations be returning? A: yup

Q: Distance weapons are mentioned, does that mean a weapon smith we can get distanve weapon blueprints from? A: you can created your own weapons

Q: Are there other zombie types than the ones mentioned in the interviews? If so can we know a bit about them? A: there will be more, no info now tho

Q: On the topic of Grapple, is it expected to behave the same as DL1, or will it have a different mechanic, such as a swing? A: grapple is different now and you can upgrade it

Q: an we drop kick zombies and humans from sky scrapers? A: Yup

Q: Will the grappling hook operate the same as in DL1? I think it was overpowered and needed bigger cool down, it took away from parkour element a lot for me. A: as I said later, it's reworked a little - not OP now

Q: Is Brecken alive in Dying Light 2? Or is he maybe related to protagonist? A: no one from DL1 comes back

Q: Does no ranged mean guns or are we also losing the bow/crossbow A: never said no ranged, i said no firearms, ranged weapons will be there

Q: Will the gore be overhauled or different in Dying Light 2? A: it will be upgraded, there are also new finishers coming in

Q: Will quarantine zones come back? A: dark zones will be in the buiuldiings

Q: what happen to the cure A: gone

Q: will there be more weapon upgrades than in the first DL? A: a lot more

Q: can we put miniguns on vehicles or weaponize them like the buggy from The Following? A: I don't think so - nothing for now at least

Q:What happend to the GRE? A: They were there when the infection started - they are the ones that gave away the biomarkers - no sight of them in the city now

Q: If there's a co-op mode, what is the max amount of players in 1 lobby? A: 4 players max

Q: Will there be more end game content then dl1? A: yup, first of all you will have to finish the game multiple times to experience the game fully, end game will also be improved

Q: What do you think will be there an epic crossover mission when we meet kyle but he's turned A: I don't think he will come back

Q: Infected animals? A: animals will be there, you can hunt them, dunno about infected ones tho

Q: Are there children in DL2? If so, can we kill them? A: Brutal

Q: Referencing the ease of combat in DL1, can we expect to see actual struggle when going against enemies? Will we have the feeling of should I fight or run? A: Ups [???] depends on the difficulty for sure, some of the fights will be hard, for example - you fight some guys near to the building and then zombies hear it and come out for few minutes, and you have XvXvX fight to go trough

Q: Kiedy pre order? A: Niedługo

Q: are the voliatile hive quests coming back? A: you will be cleaning some mess for sure, I don't know if those particular quests will go back

Q: Alright. I asked if we'll get skin to customize our weapons as in we keep them forever as blueprints and we can apply them to any weapon? A: customization will be upgraded, that's for sure, I believe we will actually share more details about it in the future

Q: Will there be brutal finishers after stun, like in old Dying Light version where Kyle pulls out smth from the chest? A: yup, we're still adding more and more finishers

Q: Are safezones upgradable in any way? A: you can't upgrade them as in "click a button and its happening" it changes when you do something for the city or you act in some way

Q: is there gonna be a volatile chase mission in the sewer like dl1? "extraction" with more running action? A: that's a really gameplay-detailed question, I don't think i have answer for it now

Q: Will there be weapons rarities? A: some weapons will be stronger than other - don't know about how will we deal with rarities

Q: can we do farming? A: i think that other people are meant for farming, not Aiden

Q: Is dl2 going to have the same docket system like dl1 if not please explain A: dockets are cool, would be good to have them back

Q: Will zombies give a fight for your life feel, or will it be light DL1 where they are primarily just nuisances? A: try going to dark zone during the day, you wont get out of there alive

Q: do we have a different type of vehicles or just one like dl the following we only had the buggy + we are going to have horses and motorbikes or no ? A: there will be some vehicles - more about that coming soon

Q: is there going to be any refrences from dl1??? A: yup, there will be differences [I’m assuming the question was misread]

Q: you said that there wont be any firearms in DL2, but can you maybe tell what's going on in here, as a game dev? It confuses me quite a lot [pic of peacekeeper with what looks like a gun] A: concept arts are not 1:1 gameplay

Q: Is there gonna be something that can make you even stronger if you maxed out all skill trees? (Like the Legend in DL1.) A: that's a really late-game stuff, i believe something like that will come

Q: will the hostile factions attack you if you go into certain areas (i.e if you take a safe zone for a scavenger will the peackeepers attack you in an office building A: yup

Q: how much is pre order and when will it go live A: we are still taking care of different editions and prices

Q: Are the weapons going to become more modern as you level up ? A: nope, weapons are really "hand made" but they all look cool

Q: Will there be any stational turrets, which you can craft/use in some safezones to clear hordes? A: people are dealing with the infected, turrets are too modern

Q: we can pre-order the game soon ? i mean like next month maybe or after a while ? A: yup, preorders will go live when we will figure out the versions etc

Q: Will multiplayer/coop loot be instance based, or client base? (DL1 uses a client base, as each player gets their own drops/items from chests/zombies) Instance based would be there's only 1 item for all players, first to grab gets. A: We still need to figure that out, I believe we will check which one is better

Q: any cool easter eggs coming? A: a lot of them

Q: Will there be any missions that require 4 players, and can more people join you for the final boss? A: 4 people is max

Q: will there be any more presentations or info about DL2 at e3? A: there will be more + new s this month

Q: Will there be boss fights and if there is at the last story mission do we have to be alone? A: don't ask about last mission when the game is not out

Q: we can play with animals like far cry ? i mean like u send animals to attack zombies or something like that, and will there be infected animals too or no ? A: you will be able to hunt animals for resources, i dont think you will be able to tame them

Q: what your prediction about the pc spec? A: i think you will be fine if you can run modern games, We go for FPS over resolution and we aim for 60 at ps4 and xone, its not confirmed tho

Q: so is there going to be some sick loot if we have dl1 and bad blood?? A: there will be something for DL owners

Q: Are there gonna be hunger and thirst bars, and food and drinks you can loot around the world or get from faction cities and safe zones? A: that's still under discussion, its not confirmed

Q: Will we see random wildlife throughout our explorations? (Not those of zombies.) A: yup and you can hunt them

Q: Will we be able to use the dying light companion app in Dying Light 2 A: probably yes

Q: so is there infected animals or no ? A: I dont think so, it's not really confirmed, so we will see

Q: Can we get a confirmation that the dev tools will be available eventually considering it massively increase the longevity of the game and wasnt a total fuckup of a decision like bad blood was? A: about dev tools - im still waiting for confirmation

Q: sorry for the torture but will there be a PVP gamemode or any special gamemode for DL2? A: we will have multiplayer based discussion, for now there are no details to tell about mp

Q: will DL2 get better mod support ? Something like Fallout 4 so we can add more stuff to the game A: i hope so

Q: asking again, will there be seasons? like winter and summer with weather changes? A: I don't think so

Q: Do i have to side with 1 faction completely? Do certain factions control certain safe zones or are safe zones neutral territory? A: nope, you don't have to side with 1 faction

Q: limitation (character inventory)? Like we can no longer have unlimited or 99x items in stacks - including crafting materials. A: I think there wont be limits to crafting materials, like 99x, i need to confirm that with devs tho

Q: Will there be walking zombie hordes, which will try to destroy safe zone's gates? And will it be like event? (is it really possible)? A: people's safe zones are protected with UV lights, zombies wont cross them

Q: Can I sleep in Dying Light 2 to skip night? A: the whole day-night cycle is changed in DL2, more details coming soon

Q1: will there be xray like in the old game A: what x ray Q2: Survivor sense, he meant I think Q3: the critical blue hit, when u hit a zombie, thats what he means A: oh, survivor sense is coming back

Q: Will duplications be patched frequently? As in DL1 there are still many that can occur. A: well i hope there wont be any dupe glitches

Q: Around how long would it take to playthrough the game once? A: quests etc are still coming so i cant really tell how long it will be right now

Q: Btw every pre-order got a bonus content so ofc dl2 got bonus content so when i buy the game after the release i can get this content even if i buy higher edition or its for pre-orders only ? A: i dont think we will have any preorder exclusives, time will tell tho

Q: How many quests Will there be? A: a lot

Q: how many or which of the zombie types from the first game will we see again in DL2? A: everyone from DL1 is coming back (zombie wise) wise some cool additions and upgrades

Q: How many factions are confirmed so far or at least under disussion? A: 2 main ones are confirmed, and there will be more side ones

Q: will there be any sort of vehicles we can drive in DL2? A: yup there will be vehicles

Q: Will there be shields and (fast?) counterattacks after blocking? A: ripostes will be there, im not sure about the shields but u can block without it

Q: The map takes place in a City, is this city based on a real life counterpart? A: it's a fictional city based on european cities

Q: what happened to the firearms i mean why they are removed from the game ? A: they are very rare commodity 15 years after diseaster

Q: can we drive vehicles? A: yes

Q: When does the Q&A end? A: in around 10 minutes

Q: I don't know if this was asked. But Will we be able to explore more then the city? A: the city alone is 4 times bigger than the first DL, there is a lot to explore, dunno about going outside tho

Q: Will there be some type of pvp in the game? A: more info about multiplayer modes will come very soon

Q: Who is the voice actor for aiden A: dunno to be honest xD not the kyle voice actors and that what matters [This has been released. Aiden’s voice actor is Jonah Scott.]

Q: So there is firearms in the game but they are very rare and hard to find ? i mean u can still find them but its hard right ? A: i mean that they are so rare that you wont find one, but as i said, there are still ranged weapons, and some you can craft on your own

Q: Will it be a new Be The Zomby ? Or Human player invading other world like DS3 ? A: as i said, no details for multiplayer this time, sorry! :x

Q: Will the implemented day/night cycle have any special amendments? (Can we expect to see random encounters/anomalies on random nights/days?) A: would be cool, ill ask devs

Q: In the trailer we saw bracelet and how "charges go down". What will happen if it goes down and will we have "antizin"? Can we buy or trade it? A: there is no antizine, strong UV lights weakens the infection, its still under discussion what will happen when it will go to 0, most possible outcome is simply dying and having to restart the game

Q: Hold up. "No guns" or "very rare guns"? I saw both those answers from Uncy A: its pretty much the same, like, they're all pretty much gone

Q: what about invasions? Be the zombie A: no multiplayer details now

Q: Is the game 4 times bigger then just the slums? Or the WHOLE game A: the whole game without the following

Q: Will there be more interactions within the game? (IE: Fishing, skinning the animals we hunt, cooking, etc) A: yup, there will be a lot to do in the city

Q: Will DL2 be on next gen xbox as it just got announced? A: right now we plan ps4 xone and pc release

Q: Will it be possible to take (offline) single-player saved games online, and if so, what proactive measures will Techland take to prevent game-save mods from disrupting the online multiplayer experience? A: as i said, multiplayer details will come in the future, those things are still under discussion

Q: Can we go and roam outside the city? A: Aiden wants to stay in the city

Q: my final question what is the virus called is it still called the harran virus A: well it's not in harran only anymore

Q: Is there some way to calculate just how many final outcomes you can get out of the game? Like in Detroit Become Human for example A: not really, not right now at least

Q: will screamers have more of a purpose then obstacle you have to get around A: they will be different this time

Q: Legend levels made the first game really easy so are they in dl2 or no ? and if they are there so is it balanced now or it will still make the game so easy ? A: legends levels are still under discussion as well

Q: Still another question about that charges... Will there be some visual and sensitive effects (like in Dying Light where the screens goes green and we dont have stamina)? A: yup, i think so at least

Q: Will there be more detailed animations for each thing we do? (If we activate our flashlight, Aiden would reach to his shoulder to turn it on) A: some things are speed up of course to not be annoying, but there will be more animations, like imagine having to reach the uv light for a 10000 time when volatile is at your face

Q: Will this channel remain so we can review all the previously stated questions? A: it will be closed but it will remain (i need to make QA out of it)

Q: Will it be possible to take (offline) single-player saved games online, and if so, what proactive measures will Techland take to prevent game-save mods from disrupting the online multiplayer experience? A: i responded to that with - no multiplayer details for now, I really don't have any info about it

Q: Can we ride horses ? A: nope

Q: Is korek in dl2? A: i dont think so

Q: anything to mention about Night hunters? A: night runners you mean? actually Aiden is the only man capable of reviving hte nightrunners caste

Q: wingsuit? A: maybe this will be one of the things we will be talking about - i mean, new traversal options

Q: Will we have the ability to pursue affections of NPC? Such as a friend meter, or even a lover? A: you will be able to interact with every single npc in the game - how? you will see

Q: Any building destruction in ds2? Like walls collapsing when you use explosives, would be cool A: just the last one - yes environment is destructible in some cases

[it-will-not-last-the-night]

Blegh

In terms of Persona 5 I’d been riding high mostly since P5D. I’d been positive mostly over it because P5D and fan-generated content had been lovely overall and really engaging and enjoyable. It had helped me forget that the main game itself seriously does upset me at times and I have a less than ideal opinion of it.

*Sigh*

Now I’m starting to feel like that again. Both announcements of today have left brought back to mind some of my biggest problems with Persona 5 and the way Atlus writes in general. What are they? A bit of a lesson then in me;

For myself there are three events in Persona 5 that I really REALLY just consider outright despicable. In no order they are; 1) Two homosexual adult males being negatively stereotyped as child molesters targeting Ryuji 2) Ryuji’s friends responding to one of the greatest acts of selflessness in the entire story by physically abusing Ryuji and 3) The Valentine’s Day event making Canon that Akira/Ren is horrible, Sojiro is horrible and that Atlus thinks all the girls are vapid idiots. 

‘Magical Valentine’ raises an issue I’ve always had but makes it even more forceful. You see in the game the Valentine’s Event is only ‘optionally’ canon. You can play a canonical run-through and not have it occur. So you can, legitimately, without needing headcanon or fanon, just have your own canon playthrough in which the girls are not vapid idiots. The anime however, now, makes it that, for the Animation, it is canon that Akira/Ren is an awful person and that the girls are vapid idiots. Oh and that Sojiro is just literally the worst like...like he is scum in this event. As bas as Akira/Ren is (and he’s bad in this version!) the bigger problem I think a LOT of people forget about the Valentine’s Harem Route is that it literally casts Sojiro as a Guardian of Futaba who would lie to conceal her boyfriend’s infidelities...even when said infidelities LITERALLY CAUSE FUTABA TO CRY! 

So the animation is now making it canon that; 1) Akira/Ren sees no reason he has to be honest or forthright with any females in his life 2) Sojiro holds such low regard for his daughter he will aide Akira/Ren in an ongoing deception and emotional manipulation of her RIGHT AFTER SHE OVERCAME A SUICIDAL PHASE OF HER LIFE and 3) That Ann, Makoto, Futaba, Haru, Takemi, Kawakami, Ohya, Hifumi and Chihaya all fall in love with the exact same person and are literally when confronted with incontervertible evidence of his infedilities not only tricked into instantly accepting that them all bringing him chocolate on Valentine’s Day was a ‘misunderstanding’ but, in the case of the Phantom Thieves members, this has so little impact on them that mere days later they have no reaction.

AKA the ending Valentine’s Harem Route basically says: “Akira/Ren successfully cheated on all the girls in his life, and is free to continue to do so since they are so stupid that they could be convinced to assume it was a ‘misunderstanding’ even under the most blatantly false of pretext,” the ending basically gives carte blanche to say that Akira/Ren will probably keep cheating on the women in his life because, well, they’re so stupid that even if they all end up right in front of him, confessing their love for him to each other’s faces...they somehow think this was a ‘misunderstanding’?

That’s gonna be canon now for the animation. Not ‘optional’ canon, just...just outright canon. Literally everything in the Canon is soured now. Did you like Ren’s bond with Ann in the foregoing episodes? Well bad news; Ren literally is willing to commit to an intimate relationship with her and then emotionally cheat on her with several different women at once. Did you like how Ren played a pivotal role in building Futaba’s character and helping her grow out of her emotional turmoil? Well sucks for you cause Ren is literally willing to lie to this girl’s face and tell her he loves her whilst carrying on behind her back with numerous other women.

It sort of goes without saying that this kinda wrecks P5A completely since, canonically, Akira/Ren is now just an irredeemable asshole and the female characters are reduced to stock harem-style idiot love interests with basically 0 individuality because everyone has to love the Protagonist (self-insert!).

But when you think about it even in the original game...this was a problem. Sure you could choose not to do it...but you could also choose to do it. This means, technically, as far as Atlus’ writing is concerned, canonically Akira/Ren has it in him to be a complete asshole with no respect for women or his friends...and the females in the game are all vapid idiots. That’s technically canon since that’s required for the Valentine’s Route to work.

Oh, also, that Sojiro is the worst. The worst.

The Valentine’s Harem Event, like the Ryuji abusing event post Shido’s Palace. does irrevocable damage to the characters and the content itself, kinda ruining it since for it to be canon...well it means the characters are terrible people or stupid. Why I sort of have to choose to ignore them to actually like the story.

Of course what does all this writing have in common? It’s a JOKE! Haha! Ryuji’s being abused, isn’t this funny? Haha! The girls are all vapid idiots and Joker’s such a chick magnet they have no varying tastes in partner at all! Haha! Gay men want to force Ryuji to undress for them! 

Isn’t this funny? I mean, no, of course not. In almost all these cases the ‘humour’ is...someone suffering. A common retort I then see is; it’s not canon, its just for a joke.

But the problem is it is, all, strictly canon. I could definitely understand if these things were packaged as clear ‘not canon’ events. 

Here’s an example; the Blazblue game series has ‘joke’ endings which are explicitly not canon but usually feature bizarre or ‘funny’ scenes. One of said scenes is a reoccuring bit in which the protagonist Ragna is made to wear glasses that causes the female cast to all fall in love with him. Putting aside the fact for the moment that, to me, this still isn’t funny since its treating the Mind Rape of the entire female cast as a ‘joke’ the fact remains that it is, however, not canon. The creators make sure that nothing that happens here technically infringes on or diminished the canon character content by making it explicitly non-canon.

Persona 5, both the game and now the Animation, take no such efforts. There are no efforts to make clear that Ryuji being beaten up is a ‘comedic non-canon overreaction’ or that Akira/Ren being a womanizing prick and Sojiro being the WORST are just ‘comedic non-canon skits’ all these are played as explicitly, irrefutably, canon. That is how the characters are, as far as Atlus is concerned. That is their opinions, their beliefs etc.

Is it weird that P5 Dancing has the best, most wholesome, most healthy characterization of the entire Persona 5 Franchise? I suppose maybe the mangas are good to, I must admit I’ve never read any of them since from what I can tell Ryuji is basically ignored in all of them in favour of focus on the girls.

Atlus has a writing problem and that problem is centered I fear on a simple fact; the protagonist is a self-insert who is assumed to be a self-insert for a very specific formula; a young male who sees female characters as things he wishes to collect for himself and wants to feel adored by. Almost all of the major writing problems stem from this; Girls seem exploited or turned into vapid haremettes? Well, obviously, gotta appeal to that ‘chick magnet’ fantasy. Homosexuality is cast as negative or frightning? Well, obviously, the fantasy being appealed to is explicitly heterosexual in nature, everything else is ‘icky’. Other males seem to constantly be the butt of a joke or consistently shown up compared to the protagonist? Naturally since the fantasy is about making the player feel like ‘the man’ and all other men are simply lame by comparison so that the girls will only love the protagonist (the self-insert).

What really bums me out about all of this is that Atlus can write such amazing scenes as Ryuji’s ‘the place I belong is next to you,’ but then in that same game or anime have the Valentine’s Event and the Ship scene. I imagine in part this is due to it being a game first, story second, so they feel there are ‘beats’ that need to be there (the loser must be made fun of, the protagonist must get all the girls) even if, from a storyboarding point of view...it just makes the characters look A) Very inconsistent in personality and attitude (Ren’s infamous standing up for a stranger being assaulted but then instantly refusing to step in to help Ryuji in Shinjuku) or B) Like massive asshats (The entire Valentine’s Event from Ren and Sojiro’s perspectives.

It is just...its sad. I want to like this story because there is legitimately good characters and writing but...in the name of appealing to the lowest common denominator it gets weighted down by stuff which is explicitly canon and makes the characters awful. 

It really makes it tough to like it at times.

*Sigh*

At the end of the day I don’t know how to handle this. Accepting its canon makes a lot of people awful or stupid. Headcanoning it away is fine but...then I gotta accept I don’t like Persona 5 per say, I like what I, or other fans, create from Persona 5.

Also can we please just be able to date Ryuji. Please Atlus. We don’t need another female character to be another fangirl for Joker, to be another vapid idiot who can be duped by the WORST Sojiro, please Atlus, please. Please. There are ENOUGH love interests Atlus, please try perhaps instead stop treating women like little toys for a protagonist to effortlessly collect and dupe. 

Watching all the Persona 5 Girls (sans Sae) in the Valentine’s Event is painful. They are characters I like, many of them have good writing...and then they are reduced to props to make a player feel “Oh yeah! Such a chick magnet! They all want me! Women are simply a commodity by which I inflate my own sense of self-worth since having multiple of them attracted to me and betrayed by me makes me feel as if this is a positive development and not a negative one!”

And I do mean that seriously. Look at most content or statements around the Valentine’s Event. They frame it positively. The ‘harem’ ending, Joker is such a ‘chick magnet’ and so ‘alpha’ etc. etc. 

Terrible emotional betrayal? Deep seated trust issues? Sojiro treating his own daughter like garbage? Ignored because ‘Joker is a PLAYER! WOOO!” And this is overall seen as a positive development. 

By now I’ve rambled on ridiculously long but if I must have a conclusion it is thus; Please give us a Female Protagonist who can date the other boys and stop selling this sexist approach where non-protagonist males and all females serve the same purpose; inflating the ego of the player character.